“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

She was of course very familiar with the spontaneous role her creative self enacted when she was writing, especially in her poetry. But this? We were to learn that the conscious yet intuitive pace of her realizations was carefully meted out by her psyche: just so much at a time. For the first few days after I finally got it through my head what Jane was really saying in her essay I couldn’t accept the idea that each one of us literally, really, creates our own reality. Conventional thinking simply couldn’t, wouldn’t accept that, I said, although I didn’t regard myself as a conventional thinker. But her breakthrough had set the agenda for our lifetimes-to-come: idea construction, all right!

In 1931 in Saratoga Springs, New York, Jane’s father, Delmer Roberts (or Del) chose to exercise the probability that he would leave his wife Marie and their daughter Jane, who was not yet three years old. Marie’s mother, Mary Finn, called Minnie, lived with the family and often served as Jane’s nanny. Jane was a second child following her mother’s earlier miscarriage. Already Marie was showing signs of arthritis. Jane and I came to believe that it was hardly accidental that her mother quickly became bedridden—for life—following the departure of her husband. Minnie Finn was killed by a hit-and-run speeding motorist one icy winter day on her way to the corner store to buy the young girl some shredded wheat for supper—a tragedy that Marie never stopped blaming her daughter for. The two went on welfare. A series of housekeepers, of varying abilities and temperaments and staying powers, were provided for them over the early years. The young Jane spent almost two years in a Catholic orphanage for women while her mother was hospitalized. Some of the housekeepers had been—and some still were—prostitutes, Jane told me. They took care of Marie’s physical needs—tasks that in her later teens Jane would often take care of herself. With welfare’s help Marie set up a telephone answering service for local doctors that she ran from her bed. The two women’s Catholicism became even stricter: it was often bolstered by the head of the local church coming to Sunday dinner at the old two-family house at 92 Middle Avenue, in one of the lower-income sections of Saratoga Springs.

Getting a divorce in New York State was difficult in the 1950s, but easy to achieve in Florida. Jane’s father, Del, traveled with his trailer from Los Angeles to meet us in Daytona Beach, Florida; we followed him to Marathon, in the Florida Keys, where we lived with him and Mischa and Del’s Great Dane, Boo, in that wonderful climate while Jane put in the required few weeks of residency that Florida divorce law required. I found work painting signs, and prepared samples of advertising art to show art directors in New York City once we’d returned north. Besides writing for herself, Jane worked briefly as a cashier in a newly-opened food market; she left the job after a few days when the manager made advances to her. Her divorce was granted without being contested, the papers signed. Del paid the costs. We thanked him, said good-bye to him and Boo and headed north with Mischa in my ancient Cadillac. We hoped we had enough money to get to my parents’ home in Sayre, PA. We made it with only one flat tire on the way.

Shortly before they were to leave Yale, Jim Serra had e-mailed Laurel and me from New Haven to confirm his and his friends’ visit. The members also had plans for visits in upper New York State and in Maine before heading back to Texas. Laurel and I always find such infrequent meetings very evocative—unique signs of the reach of Jane’s work to a variety of individuals, each with his or her own creative and intuitional skills. This is both humbling and worthwhile, that Jane’s love and inspiration has helped so many others. And still does.

First, though, as the afternoon began to lengthen our guests left us at the end of their most delightful collective visit. Laurel and I had thoroughly enjoyed meeting them; we’d badly needed a break from our endless routines of work, even if those were mostly creative. There were handshakes and thank-yous and hugs all around. Jim and Debbie, and Theresa and Winter wanted to visit the wine country of upstate New York, and then continue their vacation in Maine before finally heading back west and home. Laurel and I were left standing alone in 1730’s driveway. But not for long. She hadn’t brought birdseed along as she usually does to scatter around the house, so down the hill we went to the little store at the intersection, then back up to the silent and shuttered house....

As we stood talking another visitor dropped by also, rather literally, as a hawk or young golden eagle flew in! He or she appeared flying out of the Southwest, soaring down over the top of our house and flew right up to Deb and me to say hello! It was incredible to me as it took place, as I have never met a flying hawk or eagle face to face before. I have for many years had specific positive symbolic-seeming events with flying creatures and this seemed to be another one. Deb felt the same way. The hawk or eagle was completely in control in his or her flight, Deb and I were at no time in danger, but he or she flew in and actually looked at us almost face to face and then showed us a full in-flight wing span a meter wide (three feet or more) as he or she turned up the angle of flight and soared back up again, just over our heads. The creature flew across the road, soaring up into the branches of a tall tree, where it stopped and perched, and looked at us. Deb and I stood looking at the bird that sat with its profile to us—like a new friend who had flown in! We continued talking and were not looking at the bird when it flew away; we did not see where it disappeared to.